The city was loud at night, or rather, louder.
Cars honked in the streets, music spilled out of nearby bars, and people packed the sidewalks shoulder-to-shoulder like sardines. But what can you expect on a Saturday night in the heart of Seoul?
It was 2 a.m. and yet the city was more alive than it ever was during the day. Maybe it was the lights. Maybe it was the laughter drifting through the air. Or maybe it was the different songs clashing together from every club on the block.
Minjae leaned against the railing outside the convenience store, phone pressed to his ear while he wearily scanned the street before him.
His eyes followed the blurred tail-lights of a passing taxi, tracing the red streaks until they vanished into the glare of Hongdae. He tracked a group of college students stumbling out of a karaoke bar, then shifted to a lone man lighting a cigarette by the curb.
Minjae couldn't help but think how strange it was.
Cities were supposed to sleep at night. Back in his hometown, the streets would be empty by midnight, the only sound coming from the occasional passing car or the buzz of streetlights.
But Seoul was different.
Here, night almost felt like a second daytime.
"Are you even listening to me?"
The voice in his ear snapped him out of his thoughts.
Minjae blinked, "Uh...yeah." He paused for a second before he sighed and rubbed the back of his neck, "Sorry. I just got distracted."
"You always get distracted," his sister replied. Her tone wasn't annoyed, just tired. Minjae could almost picture her on the other end of the call, sitting on the edge of her bed with her arms crossed.
"That's because you've been talking for ten minutes."
His sister scoffed through the phone. "Excuse me for caring about whether my older brother is surviving on instant noodles again."
Minjae glanced at the convenience store window behind him where a man was arguing with the cashier about a discount.
"I upgraded," he said. "Tonight it's instant noodles and convenience store kimbap."
"That's not an upgrade."
"It is if the kimbap is on sale."
She groaned loudly. "You're impossible."
Minjae chuckled softly and leaned back against the railing. Although she wasn't going to say it, he knew why she called. He knew what she wanted to ask, and she knew what his answer was going to be.
Across the street, a group of people suddenly slowed down.
One of them pointed upward.
"Hey....what's that?"
Minjae frowned slightly.
At first he ignored it. In a city like Seoul, people were always stopping to look at something, street performers, celebrities, weird advertisements.
It wasn't anything out of the ordinary. But then more people started looking. Conversations died down. Heads titled towards the sky. Even the traffic seemed to slow.
"Is that a drone?"
"No...look!"
Getting a little concerned, Minjae followed their gaze up.
For a moment he didn't see anything. Just clouds. Then the clouds moved. Not drifting the way they normally could, no, they were pulling apart. Like something invisible was tearing them open.
"Sora, Hold on." Minjae spoke before lowering his phone slightly.
A thin line of light appeared in the sky. At first it looked like a crack in glass and then it started to spread. The more it did, the brighter the light got.
Then another one appeared beside it.
And another.
And another.
Little by little, the night sky began to split open with every crack that appeared.
"What the hell…" the man from inside the store earlier, now only a few stops away from Minjae, whispered.
The people around started to panic. How else should they react? Above the city, glowing fractures stretched across the darkness like spiderwebs of light. Through them, something shone from the other side, an intense white glow that hurt to look at.
"Minjae? Hello?"
The cracks widened, and then they tore open. Brilliant light poured out of the sky like the doors of heaven had been kicked open.
It got so bright no one could stare at it head on anymore. No one could open their eyes anymore. The air vibrated with a low thunderous hum. The ground trembled like it too was about to mirror the sky. The streets were filled with screams that got louder and louder. The light getting brighter. Blinding.
And then the lights swallowed everything. Minjae felt the world flip upside down. His phone slipped from his hand. The sound disappeared. Sight disappeared. Even the feeling of his own body faded away. There was only darkness.
An endless black.
-
"Hello?" Minjae called out as loud as his body allowed. "Anyone?"
He didn't know how much time had passed, only that it felt long. He'd been wandering aimlessly, shouting, hoping that there was someone, anyone who could hear him.
He didn't know where he was. It was so black, that the only reason he knew his eyes weren't closed was because he was blinking.
"Is there anyone here?" His voice didn't even hold an echo. It was just flat, like it wouldn't go any further than the distance his hands could stretch.
But then Minjae stopped. He felt it. Something moved in the darkness. He slowly turned to wherever his instinct told him to, "Hello?"
Nothing.
Then he felt it again. This time behind him. His heartbeat gradually began to rise. He was about to turn again, but his feet refused to move when his ears caught a sound.
It wasn't a sound he was hoping for. It was low, wet, and it echoed.
Another movement followed by the same sound came again from a different direction. This time it was closer. Then again. And again.
Minjae's breathing became faster and faster as every sound he heard, every movement he couldn't see but felt got closer and closer until he felt a cold chill go down his spine. The growl was right by him this time. Dragging. Slow. Hungry. He tried to move. In fact, every bone in his body was telling him to run. But he didn't.
He couldn't.
For a minute he didn't move. Didn't breathe. Didn't blink. He just stood there, his mind as blank as the space around him, all except for the thought of whatever the hell was in here with him.
Suddenly cold, wet fingers tightened around his ankle and dragged him onto the surface beneath him. Minjae gasped, and he scurried to get back up, but to no avail. His fingers clawed at the ground, but there was no grit, no pavement—only a surface that felt like frozen glass, slick and unforgiving.
Whatever held his ankle didn't just pull; it clamped. The pressure was bone-crushing, a rhythmic pulsing that felt like a heartbeat thrumming through skin that shouldn't be that cold.
"Let go!" Minjae screamed, the sound dying instantly in the void.
He kicked out wildly with his free leg. His sneaker connected with something soft yet dense, like striking a bag of wet sand. A wet, chattering hiss erupted from the dark—a sound of a thousand tiny teeth clicking together in rapid succession. The grip on his ankle vanished as the creature recoiled, but the silence that followed was worse.
He scrambled backward on his hands and knees, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. His eyes strained so hard they began to ache, desperate to find a shape, a shadow, anything to anchor himself to.
Then, the floor changed.
A faint, ghostly luminescence began to bleed through the "glass" beneath him. It wasn't the brilliant, blinding white from the sky in Seoul. This was a sickly, rhythmic pulse of deep red.
He wasn't on the floor. He was standing on a transparent barrier, and beneath it, miles and miles below, lay a city. But it wasn't Seoul. The buildings were jagged, obsidian shards that pierced upward like needles, glowing with that same pulsing red light.
However, as soon as the sight appeared, so did it disappear and he was back in the dark void once again.
Then, the silence broke.
The sound of the city rushed back in a distorted, sickening wave. He heard the muffled honk of a taxi, the ghostly thumping of bass from a club, and his sister's voice, warped and echoing as if heard underwater.
"Minjae? Hello?"
He scrambled to his feet, his head whipping around. He followed the sound with his eyes, staring into the nothingness, desperate to find the source of the noise. But there was no street, no convenience store, no sister. There was only the wet, rhythmic thud-drag-growl, thud-drag-growl of something moving through the dark toward him.
"I'm here!" he shrieked, his eyes darting frantically. "I can hear you! Where are you?"
The sounds of Seoul grew louder, reaching a deafening, chaotic crescendo. It was a cacophony of sirens and laughter, swirling around him like a physical wind. In the confusion, he didn't feel the movement behind him until it was too late.
The cold, wet fingers didn't just grab his ankle this time; they clamped onto his shoulder and waist with a strength that felt like iron. The creature's breath, cold as a grave, hit the back of his neck.
Minjae's lungs inflated to their limit, and a raw, primal scream tore from his throat.
"HELP—!!!!"